Teen slasher of Jewish teacher in France cites Islamic State

PARIS (AP) — A teenager armed with a machete slashed a Jewish teacher in a Marseille street on Monday, invoking the Islamic State group and saying he had also planned to go after police, a French prosecutor said.

The 15-year-old Turkish Kurd was arrested soon after wordlessly attacking the teacher, who was injured in the attack in central Marseille, said Brice Robin, the Marseille prosecutor. The teen invoked Allah and the extremist group only after he was detained, saying "the Muslims of France dishonor Islam and the French army protects Jews."

The anti-terrorism section of the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation, meaning the scope of the act is viewed as not confined to anti-Semitism. The counts being investigated were aggravated attempted murder due to the victim's religion and in relation with a terrorist enterprise; criminal terrorist association; and death threats on those holding authority, the prosecutor's office said.

The boy attacked the teacher from behind, slashing him in the shoulder, and then went after the man again as he tried to flee, Robin said. The prosecutor, speaking at a news conference, said the attacker was known as a good student who appeared to have radicalized via the Internet without his parents being aware.

The knife attack comes just days after a man armed with a butcher's knife was shot to death after authorities said he went after police in central Paris. That man's identity has not yet been confirmed but German authorities say he had lived at a shelter for asylum-seekers in the western city of Recklinghausen.

Both incidents coincide with high tension in France, which last week marked a year since the January attacks against the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket that left 17 people dead.

Over the weekend, two churches were burned and a boar's head and racist inscriptions were found Friday at Perpignan's main mosque.